How to Save a Life
by vanderlylecrybabygeek
Summary: Wasn't sure where to post - Bell/Peck.  Not slash.  Josh knows Drake needs a little saving; he'll do anything to help.  Songfic to "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, minus the suicide.


_I never write RPF, but for some reason, I did in this case. I didn't exactly know where to post this, but it still is Drake & Josh, so I figured here would suffice. Not slash. Just friendship. This idea came to me out of nowhere and wouldn't leave me alone, so have this. :) _

_Based on the song "How to Save a Life" by The Fray._

* * *

><p>Your phone goes off at 2AM, and you're pissed off because you actually have to go to work tomorrow – well, not until six at night – and someone needn't interrupt your sleep. You snake your hand out from under your warm covers to reach for the phone only to see Drake's number across your screen, wondering what the fuck he's done this time and what he needs saving from.<p>

"Hello?" you say groggily, trying to sound slightly awake.

"Joshie!" Drake cheers, and you're sure you can smell the alcohol even through the phone. "Can you come gimme a ride? Pleeeeaaaassseeee, Joshie?" And you imagine his big, brown puppy dog eyes that you could just fall into.

You don't want to go. You don't want to go at all, but you're scared that one time you'll say no. You'll say that you can't go pick him up, and he'll end up dead. You can't bear that burden. "Fine," you mumble, reluctantly pulling the covers off. "Where are you?"

"My favorite bar," Drake tells you, and you're lucky that you know where that is because the only reason he says his favorite is because he's too drunk to tell you the proper address.

"I'll be there in ten. Don't do anything fucking stupid," you mutter through gritted teeth.

He giggles. "I won't! See you ssoooon!"

You hang up the phone and rub your face in your hands. At least he's a happy drunk tonight. The last time Drake called you to pick him up, he'd been absolutely vicious. You'd gotten the brunt of his anger, meaning he yelled at you and threw his shoe so hard at you that you had a bruise on your right thigh for two weeks. You can't do this anymore. Not only is it taking a toll on you, but you're watching Drake on a slow path to his demise. You two don't hang out as much as you used to anymore, mostly because you're far more levelheaded. There are times you wish you could find your way back to his life simply because you'd bring some stability; you know all his friends are exactly like he is in the drinking, partying, and drugs respect, which is why they all click so easily. You don't fit that mold and you know it.

You're just tired of watching the dark circles around his eyes grow darker each time you see him. You're just tired of seeing the stubble on his face that you know comes from days without shaving. You're just tired of watching him fall into your car after you have to hold him up to get him down the sidewalk. You're just tired of watching him fall apart.

* * *

><p><em>Step one: You say, "We need to talk."<br>He walks; you say, "Sit down - it's just a talk."  
>He smiles politely back at you.<br>You stare politely right on through._

You show up at his house one afternoon after work, not before texting to make sure that he's home, and he answers the door with a smile and a beer in his hand. You feel your heart drop into your stomach. You didn't realize that it wasn't just an "I'm a partier by night" thing, that it actually stretched to, "It's 1:30 in the afternoon. I'm bored and lonely, so I'll crack a cold one."

Drake invites you into the living room cheerily, offering you a drink, and you politely decline, suggesting maybe that he stop after the one he's currently having. He's a lightweight and with one more, your conversation with him might be a complete lost cause because he'll be too shitfaced to know what's happening.

You sit down on the couch across from him, watching his every move as he slumps into the chair he's sitting in, asking, "What?" with a bit of a grin when he realizes you're staring.

"Um, Drake," you say, swallowing a lump in your throat.

Drake recognizes your tone and rolls his eyes, bringing the bottle to his lips again. "Oh, Jesus Christ. Here we go. What now, Peck?"

And you start. You hadn't meant for it to all flow out like that, but when you get nervous, you truly cannot stop yourself from saying everything that's been on your mind. You tell him that you know he takes breakups especially hard, but drinking himself to death isn't exactly the way to healthily handle the loneliness. You let him know that he can't keep doing this to himself. You say that you can't keep coming to his rescue and picking him up all the time, especially when they don't see each other on a regular basis except when he needs good ol' Joshie to save his ass. You might mention something about going to rehab, but you don't quite remember because Drake is fuming at this point, and when he gets mad, the look that takes over his face is terrifying.

The hurt that clouds his eyes shatters your heart. You know you have to stand your ground, however, or Drake will get nowhere, and he'll continue down the same path he's always been on. "I, uh, you, uh, you-you-y-you need help, Drake," is all you can offer.

* * *

><p><em>You begin to wonder why you came.<em>

Before you know it, Drake is yelling at _you_. You're not sure why because you haven't done anything wrong. You just told him that he needed to get help of some sort because he can't keep living life this recklessly. And he's swaying slightly as he talks, still clutching the bottle in hand, asking how you can be like that to him, asking how you can show up at his door and tell him to go to rehab because he's Drake Bell and Drake Bell doesn't do rehab. He's yelling so much that his dogs have resorted to huddling in the corner.

And you sit there and take it for as long as you can until you find your voice. "Drake, I'm tired of this. You think it's all fine, but it's not. Normal people don't cope with breakups by drinking copious amounts of alcohol for fucking months on end until they find someone else to consistently share the bed with. It's just not fucking normal, and it's exhausting watching you do this to yourself. I don't know how you don't get it, man. You're acting like a fucking moron. You can't drown your sorrows in alcohol all day, every day. I'm sure drugs are mixed in, too, but god, Drake, you can't really be as fucking stupid as you're acting. You've gotta get help because I can't take it anymore." And you know that's a shitty reason, but you tell him that you can't take the late night calls, you tell him that you can't take watching the man you were once attached at the hip with fade away, and you tell him that you're only saying it because you care and you want him to do something good for himself.

And he tells you to leave his house.

* * *

><p><em>Where did I go wrong?<br>I lost a friend,  
>Somewhere along in the bitterness.<em>

Drake doesn't call you for three weeks, and in one way, you're sure that it's for the better because you couldn't deal with him, but in another way, you're wondering who's giving him rides now or if he's being an idiot and driving himself home. He's not your responsibility, though, so you keep telling yourself to stop worrying.

There are times that you wish he'd call just so you could hear his voice, even if he makes no sense at all and is slurring all his words together. There are times you stop yourself from marching up to his front door and confiscating every kind of alcohol he has on hand. Because he's not your responsibility. And he should change for himself, not because you're forcing him to. He needs to come around on his own terms, not because you force him.

* * *

><p><em>Let him know that you know best,<br>Cause after all, you do know best._

One night, you finally decide fuck it, and pick up the phone to call him. It's been four weeks since you've heard from Drake, and you can't stand it anymore. You don't understand how, the last time you saw him, he got so ridiculously stupid and offended by what you said. You know Drake has an ego as large as the best of them, but you didn't think he was like that. You thought he'd be able to distinguish between someone caring about him and someone trying to be an asshole.

Your entire friendship with Drake has been helping each other out in some way or another, like the time he told you not to buy those hideous pink sneakers or the time that you told him that his beard made him look like a mountain man and was in no way becoming. Your friendship is based on little moments of helping each other. And there were bigger things, too, like the time Drake's album hadn't done as well as he'd anticipated, so you took him out to forget his troubles. Or the time a script that was supposed to be a huge break for you fell through, so he showed up at your house with all your favorite foods and a stack of stupid movies so you could get your mind off things.

This was the biggest of them all, of course, and after figuring out what you want to say because you practiced it in your head no less than thirty times, you start to dial when the phone rings. It's an unfamiliar number, and you answer with a bit of annoyance in your voice. "Hello?"

"Mr. Peck?" an unfamiliar voice asks, and you feel yourself straighten up.

"This is he."

"Drake has been in an accident."

* * *

><p><em>Drive until you lose the road.<em>

You feel like you can't fucking drive fast enough. You're already slightly over the speed limit, and you can't have you getting in an accident, too. Both of you don't need to deal with that shit.

Your heart is pounding so hard that's all you can hear. The hum of the road is drowned out by your heart pounding in your ears, and Jesus Fucking Christ it's loud, and god fucking damnit why is the hospital on the other side of town? Why couldn't they have brought him to the one closer to you, closer to his house?

And you don't know anything about what happened, so your mind is racing. Wondering if he's near death, wondering if it's just a few scrapes, wondering what the fuck went wrong, because the only information you got was that he was in an accident. And the stupid woman who called you, the stupid woman with her uptight professional, 'I can't tell you anything more until you get your ass here' voice makes you want to strangle her. You hope you don't run into her when you get there because if you recognize the voice, you just might.

There are idiots on the road who don't let you pass them and who aren't going fast enough, and you wish you had a motherfucking siren on your car so you could get by them. This is your best friend. Not that you've been extremely close in a few years, but the guy you've know the longest, the guy you've been watching slip away for the past few months, and you hope to god he's not dying. You feel a tear run down your face, and pretty soon, damnit, you're crying.

You don't pray. You prayed when you were little when your mother made you, and you've thanked god a few times for blessing you with a few good movies and some nice work here or there, but you don't pray. Josh Peck does not pray. But as you're pulling into the hospital parking lot, you pray. You pray that he's okay, and you won't be looking at him on his deathbed.

* * *

><p><em>He will do one of two things:<br>He will admit to everything,  
>Or he'll say he's just not the same.<em>

You walk into the hospital feeling like it's all a nightmare, like there's no way in hell this really happened because this is Drake, your buddy, your partner in crime, the one of the two of you that never gets sick, and now he's lying in some hospital bed. You feel dazed as you ask the nurse where his room is, and she points you in the right direction. You notice it's not intensive care, so it couldn't have been as bad as you had previously anticipated, but you're still nervous as you go to the room.

You linger outside for a moment, hesitating with one foot in the door.

"Go on," the nurse tells you, and her voice is warm and comforting. She manages a smile. "He wants to see you."

You're not sure what you'll see when you walk in the room, but you head in to see Drake lying in that bed looking so fragile, so small, so broken. It's nowhere near as bad as you had thought and you know he's lucky; he has a few bandages on his face where you can see he probably had deep cuts, his arm is in a cast, there are a few visible bruises, and there's an IV in his right arm. His eyes are closed, so you try not to make a sound as you make your way to the chair in the corner of the room. He must hear your shoes on the hard tile because his eyes flutter open, looking slightly out of it. Drake smiles slightly. "Hey," he says, his voice scratchy.

"Hey." You swallow the lump in your throat. "Are you okay?"

Drake nods, shifting slightly. "A little banged up, but I'm good. Sore all over, but alright. They just want me to stay the night, and I'll be outta here tomorrow. You don't have to sit so far away," Drake laughs, noticing that you're about as far from his bed as you could possibly be.

You smile a sheepish grin as you move the chair so you're right at his bedside. You start to say something, but Drake stops you before you can say anything.

"Um, look, man." Drake's voice is weak. "I'm sorry for yelling at you. I'm – I'm an asshole."

"Were you drunk tonight?" you ask, and you already know the answer, but you'd like to hear him say it.

Drake averts his eyes and nods. "I, uh, yeah."

You want to reach over and wring his neck because even though he's not on his deathbed, you could sure put him there for his stupidity. "You could've been KILLED, Drake! Do you realize that? Do you realize that you can't fuck around like this?"

"I know," he whispers, and you've never seen him look so vulnerable and scared. "I'll stop. What do I need to do to get help?"

* * *

><p><em>And I would have stayed up with you all night<br>Had I known how to save a life._

You're not supposed to stay at the hospital all night. They're not supposed to let you, but the nurse with the kind, comforting voice lets you stay there to talk things out with Drake. It doesn't take much explaining, but you tell her you had a falling out after you tried to get him to help himself, and with a knowing smile, she says, "Say no more. Stay as long as you need to."

And you know that Drake should be sleeping because there are times that the pain he's in is written all over his face, and he's wincing after doing something as simple as lifting his head from the pillow, but he's so eager to talk to you that you end up staying up all night discussing everything. "I don't know what I need to do to get clean, but I'll do it."

You really want to ask how he's been so stupid all this time, waiting until something as serious as a car accident is the thing that finally wakes him up, but he did realize he needs to get into gear, so you can't be too angry. You know you should start talking to him about looking into clinics or something, but the only thing you can think to say is, "You scared me shitless."

His closing brown eyes spring open and he scans your face. "I'm sorry." You can see from the look in his eyes that he knows it's not enough, but he gives you a little shrug, both of you knowing that he can't say anything else to fix all of this. "People keep leaving, and I can't take it anymore."

"You're a dickwad. That's why they keep leaving." You aren't sure why that's your choice of words, but it's what comes out. You can't even say it's a lie.

And Drake laughs, but the look in his eyes says he knows it's the truth. "I have been lately." He presses his lips into a thin line, sighs, and scratches at the tape holding his IV in. "I need to change."

You talk until the sun comes up and the nurse comes in and says that Drake can be discharged. His car was far more damaged than he was, he tells you, so he'll have to get another one. You help him to your car as he limps all the way, cradling his broken arm with his other hand. You get settled in the car, and as you're pulling out of the hospital parking lot, Drake asks if you'll help him find somewhere to go and if you'll help him pack his clothes.

You swallow the lump that visits your throat quite regularly now, and say, "Yes", trying to hide your utter joy that he's finally doing something for himself.

* * *

><p><em>Had I known how to save a life<em>.

Two months later, you're sitting on your couch reading over a script, wondering if it's even worth your time or if you should just call your manager and tell him you're not interested when the doorbell rings. You sigh as you get up, not wanting to be bothered with anyone, but when you open the door, your expression changes completely.

Drake stands before you wearing a gigantic grin. His hair is a little longer, falling into his eyes, and he looks a little brighter. "Joshie." He pulls you into a hug, saying, "Forty days! Forty days ago was the last time I had anything."

And suddenly you're overwhelmingly proud and the lump is back in your throat and you pull away only to throw your arms around him again. "You did it," you cheer, and you can see how proud Drake is of himself.

He nods, shoving his car keys in his pocket, grinning larger than you've ever seen him grin. "And I'm trying to be less of a dickwad."

You laugh, forgetting you said that until just now. "I didn't mean that," you tell him, even though you know it's a lie and he does, too.

"Yes, you did," Drake laughs, patting your shoulder gently. "And it's okay. Because I _was_ a total dickwad."

You invite him in, and you both fall to the couch. He catches you up on all the interesting characters he met in rehab, telling you there were some real crazies that he never wants to see again in his life. He tells you he's been out for two weeks now, but he just wasn't quite ready to call you, and he played a show the other night where he met a nice girl that he's gonna give it a shot with, promising that he won't act like an asshole toward her and drive her away like he has all his girlfriends in the past. And you tell him about the scripts you've been reading and that small guest spot on some new cop show you filmed and how you're just so happy to have him here - not dead and so happy.

"If it wasn't for you, I'd be dead," Drake says earnestly.

You nod. "I couldn't watch you do that to yourself."

"I know. Thanks, man." And you hug again. Like a real hug, not those half-assed ones you've both been doing for the past three years because it feels obligatory after not seeing each other in a few months. "Maybe we can hang out a little more now that I'm not shitfaced all the time."

And you smile and say, "Yeah, I'd like that, bro."

And soon you're talking about everything. And you laugh and laugh like nothing ever changed. You laugh like nothing bad ever happened and there was no time that split you apart and nothing that complicated your friendship. But then you realize your friendship's always been about helping each other, so maybe nothing has changed after all.


End file.
